The Battery Odyssey
September 15th, 2018
So Friday sucked.
I was cut off from my overtime the day before, so I decided when I came in to work Friday, I was going to go home early. I was feeling awful, after all, and thought I could surprise Brenda by spending a few extra hours with her on a slightly longer weekend. So I bailed at ten in the morning, taking a half day of vacation, but made one quick stop on the way home first.
It was at this point that my car decided to fail on me. I found that, upon attempting to restart my Fit, it did not wish to. So I began to process this in my head, in order to keep from panicking while stranded fifteen miles from home, and narrowed it down to three things. It had to either be the battery, the starter, or the alternator. Not much narrowing, I know, but still.
The way it was cranking led me to believe the battery was the culprit, though. This because a) the lights would dim when I tried to start the car, only to resume illumination a few seconds later, and b) that battery was half a decade old. Thus, it seemed testing the battery was the easiest way to narrow things down further, but there was just one problem: I had no tools.
Since my metric wrench set and ratchet set and pliers and wrenches and screwdrivers and everything else were sitting pretty in the tool box resident in my garage, I had to heave myself up about a mile to the nearest Home Despot in order to secure what I needed. It was the closest place that would be likely to sell tools, so that's where I went, even if it was already oppressively hot out.
So, after trundling uphill that far to get twenty five dollars worth of tools, and then back to my car, I disconnected the battery. This took a considerable amount of time, during all of which I was cooking on the asphalt, under the sun, easily stewing in my own juices at over a hundred degrees. Fun! Having secured the battery, though, now it needed testing.
Throwing it in the bag I usually use to carry my lunch and laptop and other sundries from my car to work and back, I lugged it towards the nearest car battery store. This was an undertaking, for sure, because car batteries are heavy, yes, but they're even heavier after lugging them over a mile. Under the sun. In the heat. Against traffic in one of the busiest mall areas in the Dayton area.
I stopped at one point to cool off under a tree, laying down in the shade despite the overwhelming amount of traffic passing by. I may have passed out for a short period of time. I may have also suffered a slight malfunction in my body at the time, as well, the less about which is said the better. At any rate, I eventually made it to NTB, which I despise, but I was also desperate, so there you go.
They tested my car's battery, and lo and behold: it was dying! Thus, my intuition proved correct. Yay! The bad news, however, was that the guy did not have a replacement for my car battery available. Boo! So now, I had to walk to yet another store to pick one up. I called ahead to make sure they had one first, though, a process which took about a half hour, since they kept hanging up on me.
Trudging to the Wal-Mart, the last place on earth I want to spend money, much less car battery amounts of money, I got the new battery and dumped the old one in their store, and then hauled my carcass back to the Fit at long last. Already exhausted, overheated, and incensed, getting the new battery in my car went remarkably well, despite my throwing everything around in a winded huff.
Once I'd relatively secured everything (I do need to double check all of that, I imagine), the car turned over for me effortlessly. Finally. So I at long last drove home, arriving seven hours after I'd originally planned to, and threw myself into the shower. I was filthy, in more ways than one, and had to soak my everything. Including my feet, which were now covered in blisters.
So I'll be feeling the effects of Friday for a long, long time. Ugh.